Expresso and CO2 offsets

The Portuguese daily newspaper has set our impact on the environment as a theme for February 2007. Every saturday issue will include articles and interviews regarding global warming etc. Those 4 issues will also be carbon offset in collaboration with Carbono Zero. A project that lets you calculate your environmental impact in terms on home you heat your house, home garbage you produce and how and how much you travel to work. Then they calculate your CO2 emissions. Then give you the opportunity to buy carbon offets for purchasing trees in some (although unprotected) areas in Portugal.

Hopefully this will raise the awareness of the stakes at hand but buying offsets might be best way to deal with your own impact, although Portugal certainly has lost plenty of trees the last couple of years in the annual summer forest fires.

This also makes me wonder if Expresso have any idea where and how the trees than end in their newspaper are grown, and how the paper mass is produced?! As far as I know less than 5% of the forests in Portugal are certified. Also, I guess that most paper still are bleached with chlorine (sodium hypochlorite or chlorine gas). And certainly no recycle paper...

The Portuguese prime minister Socrates recently said that climate change is a global challenge and has thus proposed a package of measure to make sure that Portugal will be able to conform wth the Kyoto Protocol. Expresso 2007-01-27 mentions some examples of this package: 45% electricity from renewable sources in Portugal by 2010, 10% of public transport should use biofuels (no deadline mentioned) and to implement a system for taking environmental concerns in public procurements (again no deadline).

Also, the state energy company EDP (energias de portugal) has in a recent strategic meeting said that their investments until 2010 will be at least 50% on renewable energy sources.